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The obesity drug Wegovy can now claim to lower the risk of heart attack, stroke, and other cardiovascular issues in people who are overweight or who have obesity, and also have cardiovascular disease. It's the first weight-loss drug to carry an indication for heart benefits. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the addition to the label on March 8 based on a study from Wegovy’s manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, showing that the drug lowered the risk of heart attack, stroke, or dying of heart-related issues in this population by 20% compared to people receiving placebo.When the results of the study were first released at the American Heart Association meeting last November, the findings were greeted with a round of applause from the heart experts in attendance. Obesity is a major ...

March 8, 2024 1:33 PM ESTMarch 8 is your last day to order free rapid COVID-19 tests, as the U.S. government prepares to suspend its at-home test program. Households in the U.S. can receive at least four rapid antigen tests, free of charge, simply by entering a name and address.The federal government has been shipping free tests since early 2022. The program was suspended for a few months in 2023, after the U.S. government stopped considering COVID-19 a public-health emergency, but was reinstated this past fall, as new variants began to spread and cause upticks in infections and hospitalizations. Now, the free testing initiative is again coming to an end.Today is the last day the U.S. Postal Service will accept orders, here. Households that have not ordered any tests since the program was ...

On Sunday, March 10 at 2 a.m., the U.S. and about a third of the world’s other countries will set their clocks forward by one hour, which will make the sun seem to rise later in the morning and hang in the sky longer in the evening. I am not alone in dreading it. Plenty of people want nothing to do with the whole hoary practice.It’s bad for health, bad for safety, bad for your mood, and just plain unpopular. But that doesn’t stop us from changing the clocks, pointlessly, twice a year.The ridiculous history of Daylight Saving TimeThe first push for changing the clocks took place in 1907, when British builder William Willett penned a pamphlet titled “A Waste of Daylight,” in which he proposed setting clocks forward one hour. “The sun shines upon the land for several hours each day while we a...

More adults are using melatonin to get to sleep at night. Unfortunately, that means more young children are finding their parents' tablets and gummies and taking them by accident.A new analysis in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which is published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, finds that melatonin was responsible for a surprisingly large share of emergency-department visits—7%—among infants and young kids who accidentally ingested a medication from 2019 to 2022. During that time span, melatonin caused about 11,000 such incidents.Past research shows that from 2009 to 2020, emergency department visits of this type spiked by 420% among this age group. In 2022, other research found a 530% increase in accidental melatonin poisonings from 2012 to 2021 among p...